Sometimes the detour is the point
By Wren ยท August 18, 2026
Who was Odysseus? The short version, for anyone who wants it.
Odysseus spent ten years trying to get home. He fought monsters, navigated impossible straits, resisted sirens, and annoyed a god or two along the way. He had extraordinary experiences. He learned an enormous amount about himself and the world.
He was also, the whole time, just trying to get back to where he started.
I was bored. Not dramatically, no single incident, no final straw. Just the slow accumulation of someone who had stopped being challenged and hadn’t yet figured out what to do about it.
Someone mentioned they were doing a civil engineering course at TAFE. I have no clear explanation for what happened next except that I thought, why not, and enrolled.
The Course
I want to be clear that I finished the whole thing. This matters to me. I have, it turns out, unreasonably high standards, which is both a strength and occasionally exhausting to live with. Starting something and not finishing it was never really an option once I was in.
The course took a while. I hadn’t studied formally in somewhere between fifteen and twenty years, which meant relearning how to learn before I could actually learn anything. That part was unexpectedly interesting.
There were others in the cohort doing exactly the same thing, mid-career professionals who had looked sideways at their current situation and thought, maybe not this, maybe something entirely different. We were a specific kind of student. Motivated, slightly anxious about being back in a classroom, and running quiet parallel calculations about whether any of this was actually going to lead somewhere.
The Spreadsheet Moment
The drawing subjects were where it fell apart. Civil engineering involves visualising objects in three-dimensional space, rotating them mentally, understanding how they relate to each other physically. I could not do this. My brain simply declined to participate.
The number subjects were different. When an engineering calculation needed to happen I did what came naturally: I built a spreadsheet. Auto-calculating, properly structured, cross-referenced. My lecturer looked at it with an expression I recognised as someone encountering a solution they hadn’t anticipated.
It was at this point that something became clear.
I did not want to be an engineer. I wanted to do what I was already doing, but better, and with more confidence that I was actually good at it.
What I Came Back With
The pay cut alone would have ruled it out, honestly. Starting over in a new field at this stage of a career is a significant financial decision and the numbers didn’t work.
But that wasn’t really why I went back to accounting and finance. I went back because the course had done something I hadn’t expected: it showed me where my strengths actually were. Precision. Systems. Finding the elegant solution inside a complicated problem. Enjoying the numbers when everyone else in the room is quietly suffering through them.
I also came back knowing how I learn. When I need to pick up something new, I know the approach that works for me now. I know I need to understand the underlying logic before I can apply the method. I know I’ll build a spreadsheet whether or not anyone asked me to. I know I’ll hold myself to a standard that is probably higher than the situation requires.
That last one is still a work in progress.
The Part Where the Detour Was the Point
Odysseus didn’t waste ten years. He came home knowing things he couldn’t have known if he’d taken the direct route.
The TAFE course didn’t tell me to change careers. It told me what I was actually good at, why I was good at it, and what kind of learner I am. Those are not small things to know in your 40s when you’re starting to wonder if you’ve made all the choices already.
I didn’t know the spreadsheet would follow me to TAFE. Like a puppy. Some things just know where they belong. The Wanderer Clocks Off has more on why that kind of self-knowledge counts even without a five year plan attached to it.